“The cops don’t bother me. I don’t kill nobody. I don’t sell drugs near schools. I don’t pimp out no little girls.”
Yes, I bet they loved him. I bet even now some civic group was naming a park after him near the Port Authority.
I sat in the back of a coffee shop on West 54th Street as he cut and pasted my picture into the fake driver’s license and then sealed it with a portable laminating machine.
“This gizmo, best investment I ever made. You gotta think about a revenue stream, chica, an IRA. I can help you get work.” He looked at me and then shook his head.
“Nah, I don’t think so. You too sweet. You look so sweet you could be like that girl in the Neil Diamond song, ‘Sweet Caroline.’” He pumped his fist in the air in time to the music in his head.
So a grubby guy who dealt in black market IDs and fake food stamp book lets gave me twenty-five hundred dollars, a new driver’s license, and a new name. On the bus ride to Florida I fleshed out my new past and hurtled toward what I hoped was a new future.
Three years later when I met Grant Sturgis he gave me another new life. Over time, I allowed myself to think that I might really have buried that other person. The one from Michigan who did a stupid thing so long ago she really did seem like another person.
Thirty
Babe’s Paradise Diner looked the same as it did most mornings, with one exception. In the past if there had been a cluster of people hunched around one other person, it would have been around Babe. That morning people were huddled around a ten-inch computer screen in the corner booth.
“I’m standing outside the Connecticut police station where just weeks ago the suburban woman known as the Fugitive Mom was held when it was discovered that she was escaped convict Monica Jane Weithorn. Weithorn escaped from a minimum security facility in Michigan more than twenty years ago and today she returns to sleepy Springfield, Connecticut, to the shocked neighbors and friends who for decades knew her as Caroline Sturgis.
“After surrendering her passport, the convicted drug dealer was released on one million dollars bail. What she does next and what she’ll call herself is anyone’s guess, but one thing is certain. Authorities in two states will be keeping a watchful eye on her until December 6, when she returns to Michigan to hear the judge’s decision on whether she’ll be forced to serve out her original sentence or be returned to the privileged upper-middle-class lifestyle she’s been enjoying for these last two decades. Back to you, Dave.”
“Stop screwing around on the Internet, Harry. Aren’t you supposed to be working on that thing?”
The man in the corner booth grumbled but complied. That news report was as much as most people had seen or heard that morning anyway. Caroline was coming home. The crowd dispersed as he turned off the sound on his netbook.
“Something in the tone of that reporter’s voice made me hate her,” Babe said.
I knew what she meant. As vague as it was, the report made it seem as if Caroline had been selling crack in school yards and buying bling and driving big cars over the backs of small children and hopeless drug addicts. The true story was more complicated. Of course she did have a pretty sizable bling collection and a couple of big cars. It was a confusing situation. Even Caroline’s friends didn’t know exactly where they stood.
I’d caught the early news at home, and it was a little more complete than the web video clip. According to the TV news, she and Grant would be landing at the Westchester Airport at 7 P.M.Journalists and cameramen were already camped out, ready to pounce.
But I knew better. Caroline was already home, having arrived at Bradley Airport, outside Hartford late the previous evening. I knew because we’d talked this morning. I was on my way to see her.
I’d take a private unpaved road to the back of the Sturgis house. Caroline and Grant would leave the inside garage door open for me and I’d be able to enter that way.
They waited for me in the mud room, looking pasty and drained. I guess that was to be expected. He had cavernous circles under his eyes, and she had dark roots, edgy if you lived in the East Village but a major no-no for suburban Connecticut. She tried unsuccessfully to cover them with a scarf folded over many times to serve as a wide headband. Her usually buffed and ovalled nails were rough, and she’d torn at her cuticles, bloodying a few of the fingers.
“Welcome home,” I said, trying to sound chipper. “Everything’s going according to plan. I heard from Lucy last night.”
The three of us hugged. Then, as previously arranged, Grant left for Hartford to lead any reporters on the merry chase we’d orchestrated with help from Lucy Cavanaugh. Eager to be a part of the story, Lucy had come up with a cloak-and-dagger scenario that would buy Caroline some time with Grant and the rest of her family and the Sturgises had agreed. Lucy had flown to Detroit the previous night and would return on the flight that Caroline would reportedly be taking. Lucy would be in an obvious disguise and when Grant met her at the airport they would lead any intrusive reporters on as long as chase as they could. If it gave Caroline a day of peace to reconnect with her children and meet with her lawyer, that would be enough.
Caroline led me into their immaculate kitchen. The only thing that was incongruous was a mountain of unopened mail on the credenza opposite the central island. There were no mimosas this time, only a pot of herbal tea. She brought out a blue tin of Danish butter cookies that I’d seen stacked up at the local Costco.
“Grant’s been amazing. But look at this,” she said, fingering the top of the tin. “He’s been living on the pantry. If I hadn’t gotten out, when I did he would have been down to the cocktail onions and foil packets of coffee and cheese from last year’s holiday gift baskets.” She pointed to the spotless kitchen. “He’s trying so hard to be normal, he even wrote ‘Mommy home!’ on the whiteboard.”
There was a catch in her voice as she said it, but she was remarkably composed for a woman who’d been through the ordeal that she’d had.
“We’ll survive this,” she said. “Our marriage may even be stronger after the dust settles. If it wasn’t for the kids, I’d be glad this came out. You don’t know what it’s been like, keeping it in all these years. Thank you for finding out how it happened. I wouldn’t have cared, but Grant had to know who was responsible. It would have driven him crazy.”
She shook her head and smiled. “Jeff Warren. I recognized him immediately, even with the beard and mustache. He was always a nice boy.”
“That’s what his mother says. Did you recognize anyone else who was new in town? Someone at Mossdale’s, perhaps?”
“No,” she said. “I usually just go out with Becka and we rarely see anyone. You mean the priest, don’t you?”
I nodded.
“Never saw him before in my life. He just scared the heck out of me. He used exactly the same words another priest had used years ago when I went to the St. Ann’s shelter. I send them a check every year for their Holiday Fund Drive.”
“What are you gonna do now?” I asked.
“Wait until the judge decides. Until then, whatever they let me do. The people who used to be in my life. You, the moms, my book group.”
“I’m here, aren’t I? Give the rest of them time,” I said. “They don’t know how to process this.” Privately I thought all it would take was one well-connected person to step up and welcome her back, to remind the rest of the pack that she was still Caroline, the woman they all loved a month earlier. For goodness sake, we forgave Nixon, didn’t we?
I was betting that person would be Becka Reynolds. She had a good heart and had helped before, but I made a mental note to give her a little nudge if she needed it.